Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

“Where’d you hear about that?” I wanted to know.

“Can’t remember,” he said. “But you can go ahead and use it.”

“Maybe I will.”

He just gave me one of his all-purpose shrugs by way of reply and then steered the conversation elsewhere.

Funny thing is, I was never jealous of what he and Izzy had going. I was just happy that she was happy. I know how corny that sounds, but what can I do? It’s the truth.

* * *

I actually had a pretty normal day today. I got up early and wrote all the way through until about twelve-thirty when Alan came by to see if I wanted to go down to Perry’s for lunch, where we ran into Christy. Alan had to go back to work after lunch—he’s editing a collection of Kristiana Wheeler poems that his press is publishing in the fall—so Christy and I went rambling through the narrow streets of Old Market together, just the two of us, soaking up the ambience, pretending we were somewhere in Europe inside of Newford. That’s one of the things that I’ve always liked about this city. It’s such a hodgepodge of architectural stylings and humours that I sometimes feel as though I could visit any major city in the world without ever leaving its streets. All I have to do is turn a corner.

Old Market is definitely old world. The matrons in their black dresses and shawls, gossiping in clusters like small parliaments of crows. The little old men sitting at tables in the cafes, drinking strong coffee, smoking their pipes and playing cards or dominoes. The twisty cobblestoned streets, too narrow for most cars. The way the old gabled roof-lines seem to lean up against each other, whispering secrets in the form of swallows and gulls. The air is full of the smell of baking bread and fish and cabbage soup and other less discernible odours. Hidden gardens and squares rise up out of nowhere, tangles of rosebushes and neatly laid-out flowerbeds, small cobbled-stoned plazas with wooden benches and wrought-iron light-posts. The rest of the city seems a hundred miles away. A hundred years away.

By the time I got back to the Waterhouse Street apartment I was feeling so relaxed that I sat down and finished “The Goatgirl’s Mercedes” and got about three pages into a new story that’s still waiting on a title. Truth is, I don’t even know what it’s about yet. I just met the characters and we’re still negotiating.

* * *

I brought my journal along to my session with Jane today, but I didn’t show her any of it. She asked me how it was going and I had to admit that I enjoyed writing in it.

“But even writing to myself,” I admitted, “I still can’t seem to talk about the past. I start to write about it and everything closes up inside me.”

“Don’t force it,” Jane told me. “Remember what we agreed on: no expectations. Let what wants to come, come.”

“That sounds like the way I normally write.”

“So you’ve already got the trick down. What you have to do now is stick to it.”

I can’t remember what else we talked about. Nothing monumental, that’s for sure. I almost told her that I just wanted to forget about these weekly sessions, but then I remembered Christy talking about how long it had taken him to work things out when he was in therapy and I decided to stick with it a little longer. I mean, it’s not like I’ve got anything better to do with that one hour a week.

* *

The new story sucks. I’ve never dragged such a limp cast of characters out of my head as the ones that I’ve got stumbling through this story. I’d scrap everything I’ve done so far except I know from experience that having let them out onto the page, they’ll never give me any peace until I take them through to the end. Makes no difference to them how shitty the story turns out to be, just so long as I finish it.

* *

Margaret used to delight in tormenting me. I don’t know what she had against me. So far back as my memory goes she would find ways to hurt me, emotionally as well as physically, and it just never made any sense. I mean, what could a three-year-old—which is as far back as I can clearly remember—possibly have done to earn such hate? I used to drive myself crazy trying to make sense of it. Trying to figure out ways to get on her good side.

It was only when I got older that I realized it didn’t have anything to do with me personally. It was a power thing and I was just one more thing for Margaret to control.

I hope my sister—excuse me, my stepsister—Susan is suitably grateful to me. If I hadn’t been there, her parents would have taken it all out on her, instead of me. But of course as far as Susan’s concerned, the sun rises and sets with Margaret and Peter. Especially Margaret. Everybody always defers to her. I mean, while it’s true that Peter started fucking me from the time I turned six, and I’m not saying the old pervert didn’t enjoy it, it was Margaret who put him up to it. Margaret who sat on the bed and watched it happen. Margaret who kept coming up with all these “interesting” variations. Margaret who took the Polaroid pictures that they’d sell to the other sick freaks who hadn’t been lucky enough to acquire their own live-in sex toy. Considering what put my natural father in jail, I guess life wouldn’t have been much better living with my real parents.

I wonder what it’s like to have parents that love you. Parents who’d do anything to protect you from the kind of shit that Margaret reveled in.

I’m never going to know, am I?

* *

This morning I was washing out a tin can before I put it in the recycling bin and I sliced open my finger. I can’t believe how much blood poured out of that little wound. I might have bled to death, standing there watching the blood spurt from my finger into the sink, but I finally got smart, washed it out, bandaged it, and then put up with the way its been throbbing all day.

Luckily it was the index finger of my left hand, so I can still write my daily entry. Trouble is, ha ha, I’ve got nothing to say. Cutting my finger was the highlight of my day.

* * *

Izzy called this morning and we had a nice long talk. She’s invited me out to the island for the weekend, so I’ve got that to look forward to. I still can’t get used to her being so far away after all the years we lived together, but then things started to get different long before she actually packed up all her stuff and went away.

Something changed in Izzy after John left her and the mugging. I’m not sure which was worse on her.

The mugging seemed a betrayal of the city she’d come to love, as though it were responsible for the battering she received. When she finally moved back to the island a few years later, I wasn’t surprised. I think I was the only one.

As for John’s abandoning her ... I wonder if he ever realized just how much he broke her heart? He was the reason that she didn’t want to use her newfound magic anymore. It was as much because of how badly things turned out between them as it was for John’s warnings of the danger it would put the numena in. That’s what I call the beings that came to life through Izzy’s art. I ran across the word “numen” in the dictionary once while looking up something else. It means a spiritual force or influence often identified with a natural object, phenomenon, or locality. Works for me.

Izzy and I had long talks about her numena, me saying she owed it to the numena to make their own choice as to whether or not they wanted to come across, she being scared of what might happen to them once they got here and knowing how terrible she’d feel if they got hurt. I’m not sure what convinced her to continue bringing them across. I doubt it was my arguments alone—when Izzy sets her mind on something she can be the most stubborn woman I know. It’s more likely that with Rushkin gone, she felt it would be safe.